STRATEGIC CULTURE AND BURDEN SHARING IN NATO: FALSE FRIENDS? By Maj Jordan Becker, USMA * 2012 STRATEGIC CULTURE AND BURDEN SHARING IN NATO: FALSE FRIENDS? Burden sharing is once again atop the NATO agenda. With austerity beginning to bite into defense budgets, the European Union has initiated a policy of “pooling and sharing” 1 in defense matters, while NATO has developed a program for “Smart Defense.” 2 As NATO’s war in Afghanistan drags on, Americans at the highest levels are concerned about their European allies’ ability to contribute robustly to the Alliance’s challenging missions. Much was made of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ final address in Brussels, in June of 2011, in which Secretary Gates referenced growing impatience in America with dwindling defense expenditures in Europe, using the phrase ‘dim and dismal.’ 3 However nuanced Secretary Gates’ address may have been, and however committed an Atlanticist Gates himself might be, his words attracted significant attention. At the writing of this paper, at least two member states (Turkey and France) were under significant domestic political pressure to intervene in Syria. 4 But, as Operation Unified Protector over Libya in 2011 demonstrated and as defense ministries in those same countries confirm, the limited capabilities of most NATO allies make mounting the type of operation required impossible without direct US involvement. 5 In spite of initially optimistic reports, Operation Unified Protector is likely not to be a template for burden sharing in future NATO interventions, 6 and the Alliance is extremely reluctant to repeat the experience. Today, as has been the case for most of NATO’s history, the military burden of collective security is borne unequally among allies. The ongoing financial crisis affecting both sides of the Atlantic has put defense expenditures and burden sharing into sharp focus. In 2009, Keith Hartley and Binyam Solomon predicted that, independent of the financial crisis, evolutions in NATO strategy toward force projection would exacerbate burden sharing difficulties among NATO allies, arguing that the systems required to conduct such operations * The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense. Ongoing financial challenges affecting both sides of the Atlantic have brought defense expenditures into sharp focus and have elevated the issue of burden sharing to the top of the NATO agenda. Americans have expressed concern regarding the European allies’ ability to contribute robustly to the Alliance’s challenging missions. What explains the unequal burden sharing in NATO, and why does the alliance persist in spite of it? This paper analyzes the relationship between strategic culture and burden sharing among NATO allies and argues that Alliance members should not conflate equality in burden sharing with alliance cohesion or effectiveness.
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STRATEGIC CULTURE AND BURDEN SHARING IN NATO: FALSE FRIENDS?
By Maj Jordan Becker, USMA*
2012
STRATEGIC CULTURE AND BURDEN SHARING IN NATO: FALSE FRIENDS?
Burden sharing is once again atop the NATO agenda. With austerity beginning to bite into defense
budgets, the European Union has initiated a policy of “pooling and sharing”1 in defense matters, while
NATO has developed a program for “Smart Defense.”2 As NATO’s war in Afghanistan drags on,
Americans at the highest levels are concerned about their European allies’ ability to contribute robustly to
the Alliance’s challenging missions. Much was made of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ final
address in Brussels, in June of 2011, in which Secretary Gates referenced growing impatience in America
with dwindling defense expenditures in Europe, using the phrase ‘dim and dismal.’3 However nuanced
Secretary Gates’ address may have been, and however committed an Atlanticist Gates himself might be,
his words attracted significant attention.
At the writing of this paper, at least two member states (Turkey and France) were under significant
domestic political pressure to intervene in Syria.4 But, as Operation Unified Protector over Libya in 2011
demonstrated and as defense ministries in those same countries confirm, the limited capabilities of most
NATO allies make mounting the type of operation required impossible without direct US involvement.5
In spite of initially optimistic reports, Operation Unified Protector is likely not to be a template for burden
sharing in future NATO interventions,6 and the Alliance is extremely reluctant to repeat the experience.
Today, as has been the case for most of NATO’s history, the military burden of collective security is
borne unequally among allies.
The ongoing financial crisis affecting both sides of the Atlantic has put defense expenditures and
burden sharing into sharp focus. In 2009, Keith Hartley and Binyam Solomon predicted that, independent
of the financial crisis, evolutions in NATO strategy toward force projection would exacerbate burden
sharing difficulties among NATO allies, arguing that the systems required to conduct such operations
* The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the position of the United States
Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.
Ongoing financial challenges affecting both sides of the Atlantic have brought defense expenditures
into sharp focus and have elevated the issue of burden sharing to the top of the NATO agenda.
Americans have expressed concern regarding the European allies’ ability to contribute robustly to the
Alliance’s challenging missions. What explains the unequal burden sharing in NATO, and why does
the alliance persist in spite of it? This paper analyzes the relationship between strategic culture and
burden sharing among NATO allies and argues that Alliance members should not conflate equality in
burden sharing with alliance cohesion or effectiveness.
2
tend to belong to larger member states that have already made the significant capital investment in such
systems.7 Specialization, they argue, can mitigate the tendency toward unequal burden sharing generated
by the emphasis on such public goods, but possibly at the expense of a strategic vision focused on force
projection and active defense.
Specialization has underlain the Alliance’s efforts to manage the effects of the financial crisis,
epitomized by the Smart Defense agenda. But specialization raises a crucial dilemma for member states
in that it involves ceding some sovereignty by pooling resources in a fundamental area of state identity:
security.8 How can states assure access to assets when they are pooled at the Alliance level? Smart
Defense also risks being a rhetorical fig-leaf for diminished investment in capabilities among most
member states.
At the same time, the United States has announced a “Pacific Pivot,” focusing its security energies
toward Asia, while counting on Europe as a producer, rather than a consumer of security.9 Much like
former Secretary Gates’ address, perhaps too much has been made of this “pivot.” The US has always
been a “Pacific Power,” and the fact that the territorial integrity of European states is no longer a matter of
immediate risk suggests that transatlantic security cooperation since the Second World War has been
quite successful. But perceptions matter. Even the staunchest of Atlanticists are concerned: In “The First
Review of the National Security Strategy 2010,” published on 8 March 2012, the UK Parliament’s Joint
Committee on the National Security Strategy concluded that “geographical and functional shifts in US
policy… [raise] fundamental questions if our pre-eminent defence and security relationship is with an ally
who has interests which are increasingly divergent from our own.”10
Other NATO allies are
contemplating adjustments as well: Atlanticist stalwart Poland has begun to warm to stronger EU defense
ties in an attempt to “diversify its security guarantees.”11
This is not the first time that burden sharing has been an issue for the transatlantic security
community. History suggests, however, that while unequal burden sharing may be a source of discord
within the alliance, it does not pose a mortal threat to NATO as an institution.12
In spite of its flaws,
NATO members continue to value the alliance as an aggregator of capabilities, interests, and values.
What then, explains unequal burden sharing in NATO, and why does the alliance persist in spite of it?
This paper explores a particular set of hypotheses attempting to explain persistent unequal burden
sharing in a persistent alliance like NATO, privileging the testing of the notion that convergence (or
divergence) in strategic culture can explain variations in burden sharing among US and European NATO
allies over the history of the alliance. A paradox of current thinking on NATO’s future is the dual notion
that 1) the alliance would be stronger if allies would spend more on defense and 2) the alliance would be
stronger if allies’ perceptions of risks, threats and opportunities (all components of strategic culture) were
more similar. This paper argues that variations in strategic culture do not necessarily cause
3
variations in defense expenditures. Because of this observation, it seems likely that NATO’s
persistence does rely on both the alliance’s ability to adapt to retain utility and on shared values among
allies, but that adaptability is paramount. As a matter of policy, then, the notions of strategic culture and
equal burden sharing should be decoupled in terms of alliance goals, particularly from the perspective of
the United States. This argument is based on the following findings:
1) Burden sharing among allies has varied widely over the course of NATO’s history, and
current burden sharing ratios, although they suggest significant decline in equality since
1990, are in line with historical averages.
2) There is no theoretical reason to assume that shared strategic visions will yield more
equal burden sharing.
3) There does not appear to be a convincing causal relationship between convergence in
language used in strategic documents of the United States and NATO, taken as a measure
for the extent to which US strategic culture determined the strategic culture of the
alliance as a whole, and convergence in burden sharing.
From the perspective of the United States, the policy implications of this assessment are that if the
objective is more solidarity in terms of strategic culture, then emphasis on defense expenditures should be
set aside. On the other hand, if the objective is increased defense expenditures by European allies, then
emphasis on converging strategic cultures should be set aside, at least temporarily. At a minimum, if the
United States seeks to achieve both a convergence in strategic culture and increased defense expenditures
on the part of its European allies, the two notions should be decoupled to the greatest extent possible. The
simple logic underlying this argument is that, generally speaking, policy makers make decisions on
defense expenditures based on assessments of risks, threats, and opportunities facing their states. If
European policy makers perceive their states’ situations to be nearly identical to that of the United States,
they are likely to assume that the United States will bear most of the burden associated with maximizing
the attainment of their common goals, not out of generosity but as a byproduct of the United States
pursuing its own agenda. On the other hand, if European policy makers perceive their situation differs
from that of the United States, then they are likely to bear more of the burden associated with maximizing
the attainment of their security goals. In so doing, they are likely to generate more capabilities that can be
used by NATO when needed.
Now is far from the first time in NATO’s history that burden sharing has been an issue. This paper
argues that Alliance members should not conflate equality in burden sharing with Alliance cohesion or
effectiveness. Empirically, the “burden gap,” a crude measurement of the gap between the military
burden of NATO Allies and the largest contributor to NATO defense spending, the United States, has
experienced a long-term narrowing trend from the mid-1950s until present, in spite of a slight widening
since the late 1990s. This paper argues that periods of particularly unequal burden sharing among Allies
coincide not with periods of a lack of internal cohesion or effectiveness of the Alliance itself, but with
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periods in which the United States was pursuing “private goods”13
in the field of security – the Korean
War, the Vietnam War, the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, and the “Global War on Terror.”
WHY IS BURDEN SHARING UNEQUAL IN NATO?
There are two primary approaches to the economics of Alliance burden sharing. The first,
developed by Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser in 1966,14
describes security of Alliance members
as a public good, and therefore defines Alliance burden sharing as a collective action problem. Olson and
Zeckhauser therefore hypothesize that NATO members with higher GDPs would contribute more
(relative to GDP) to Alliance security than smaller members, because they benefitted more. Smaller
members could, therefore, free ride.
Todd Sandler and John Forbes theorized that changes in strategy and technology that took place in the
late 1960s and persisted throughout the 1970s caused Alliance security to cease being a public good and
to become a joint product. Security within the Alliance was no longer a pure public good, because
“rivalry in consumption, multiple outputs, benefit exclusion, and private benefits [were] increasingly
characterizing modern Alliances.”15
The operational reason for this, according to Sandler and Forbes,
was the shift in emphasis from strategic nuclear weapons to conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.
As Alliance strategy shifted from deterrence to protection, the benefits of membership became more and
more “excludable” – NATO was something different than just a nuclear umbrella covering its members.
The increased “excludability” (in the sense that benefits could accrue “privately” to individual states
within the Alliance) should, according to Sandler and Forbes, lead to more equal burden sharing by
encouraging European Allies to contribute more equally to Europe’s defense. The empirical data largely
aligned with Sandler and Forbes’ theorizing.
While differing from an economic perspective, both the Collective Action and the Joint Product
models of Alliance burden sharing clearly suggest one thing: that a less integrated Alliance will yield
more equal burden sharing. An Alliance that defines security as indivisible is an Alliance that, from an
economic perspective, is likely to see its leading member or members bears a disproportionate share of
the security burden. If NATO members want more equal burden sharing, then, they should focus less on
cohesion and common values; if they want more cohesion and common values, they should focus less on
burden sharing.
ASSESSING BURDEN SHARING AND STRATEGIC CULTURE
The research for this paper was conducted in two major parts: first, burden sharing was assessed
as a phenomenon and second, strategic culture was measured and assessed against evolutions in burden
sharing.
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Burden Sharing: Much Ado About Nothing?
Disagreements about burden sharing have figured in NATO member relations since the inception
of the Alliance – but have had little real impact on the Alliance’s ability to fulfill its mission. The historic
“transatlantic bargain” has been renegotiated a number of times based on evolving requirements, but the
underlying Alliance has remained surprisingly stable. Much has been made recently of the precipitous
decline in percentage of NATO’s overall expenditure (cost share)16
undertaken by European Allies since
1990 – from 40% to 25% by 2011.17
A quick glance at this metric over the course of NATO’s history
reveals a somewhat different story, however. 1990 was a bit of an outlier – one of the highest years in
history for European NATO cost share, and well above the historical average of around 27%. For the
majority of NATO’s history, European Allies’ cost share has hovered between 20% and 30%, and it has
been between 25% and 30% for most of the last 20 years (see graphic below).
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Cost share is by no means the only way of measuring burden sharing in NATO – but it is a
generally accepted one in the present discourse surrounding the issue, as Howorth’s and Gates’ remarks
indicate. The graphic above suggests that current intra-Alliance burden sharing is by no means out of line
with historic trends – concern over burden sharing (insofar as it focuses narrowly on defense
expenditures) is excessive. However, the gap is widening, and it likely will widen further, given
somewhat differing approaches to the financial crisis exhibited on each side of the Atlantic. Why has the
0.00%
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ost
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NATO Cost Share, 1949-2009
United States
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US Average
Europe Average
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gap widened since the late 1990s, and why does it look poised to continue widening? And what does this
trend mean for the Alliance?
Not much, if we keep things in historical and theoretical perspective. First, as Olson and
Zeckhauser articulated nearly 50 years ago, an alliance that includes a member that is distinctly larger and
more powerful than other members, unequal burden sharing is to be expected. Second, as Sandler et al.
postulated, increasingly public security benefits (such as a nuclear umbrella) can also be expected to
contribute to unequal burden sharing ratios. What is somewhat surprising is the gap in burden sharing
that opened in NATO after the end of the Cold War. Could it be that Mearsheimer’s prediction was
coming to pass, and the alliance was falling apart in the absence of the Soviet Union? The political
economy theorizing referenced above would suggest perhaps not. Theorizing on the particular security
dilemma faced by a potential or perceived hegemon – or at least a unipolar power19
sheds some light on
this question. Because of the far-flung nature of US interests and the unipolar nature of the post-Cold
War security environment, the United States defined its national security interests in an extremely broad
way – and attempted to convince its allies to do likewise. As the security and stability of the planet came
to be defined as a US national interest, security of NATO member states, mutually assured destruction or
not, came to function like a public good. As such, the more broadly the United States defined its core
security interests, the more likely its allies (and others) were to free ride.
It is useful to take a long view when assessing historical burden sharing in NATO. There are
several ways of measuring burden sharing beyond the cost share metric that help clarify long-term trends.
First among these is Military Burden, defined as a state’s military expenditures (MILEX) as a percentage
of that state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Military Burden is an important figure since it is what
NATO has come to use as a benchmark for burden sharing – alliance leaders frequently allude to a 2% of
GDP target for member state MILEX, although there is no official policy document outlining this
aspiration. The chart below visually traces Military Burden over the course of NATO’s history:
7
The data used for this analysis actually offers a slightly high estimate of military burden for member
states, because of a rather wide definition of what constitutes military spending. More important than the
actual Military Burden percentage are the observable trends. First, in spite of a recent rise, US Military
Burden has exhibited a clear long-term downward trend, which is less observable among European
NATO members.
Second, periods of convergence of Military Burden appear to align broadly with periods of increased
excludability of security benefits, in line with Sandler et al.’s postulate. Gaps were widest during the
early Cold War period, during which the US doctrine of Massive Retaliation made security extremely
non-excludable. The large increase in US military burden during the Korean Conflict period is also an
indication that the excludability of the benefits of that conflict - the United States clearly had more at
stake in Korea than did the European NATO allies.
Unlike the US/NATO doctrine of Massive Retaliation during the Mutually Assured Destruction
period, Flexible Response allowed for the limited use of both nuclear and conventional forces in the event
of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. This approach leads to more excludability and should, therefore,
lead to more equal burden sharing, which was in fact the case during the mid-Cold War period.
The immediate aftermath of the Cold War was characterized by a search for direction on the part of
NATO. The alliance sought to redefine itself in the absence of the threat that had galvanized its creation
and persistence during the Cold War. The period was also characterized by a series of conflicts at the
periphery of Europe, as Yugoslavia disintegrated violently. It is during this period that the persistence of
NATO came into theoretical question, but, perhaps paradoxically, burden sharing equalized during the
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Mili
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Military Burden, Select NATO Members and Groupings, 1949-2009
France
Germany
Italy
United Kingdom
United States
All European Members
All Small Members
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early years of this period, only becoming more unequal as US defense spending began to ramp up around
1996, a trend that intensified after September 11th, 2001.
So the broad outlines of trends in burden sharing appear to align fairly well with the theorizing on the
political economy of alliances, and shed some light on the debate on NATO’s persistence as well. The
alliance continued to have utility to most of its members, who continued to believe themselves to be a part
of a transatlantic security community. But did the beliefs of member states have a significant impact on
their willingness to devote resources to collective security, or to security at all? Did evolutions in
strategic culture impact burden sharing among alliance members?
ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF STRATEGIC CULTURE ON BURDEN SHARING
At least three factors are important in assessing the impact of strategic culture on burden sharing.
First, attitudes expressed by major political parties on strategic issues are important because they reflect
popular attitudes as reflected in domestic political positioning. Second, attitudes expressed by
professionals in the field of security are important because they should impact strategic choices more
directly. Third, and perhaps most important, actual strategies as articulated by member states and the
institution itself provide insight into elites’ perceptions of an institution and its relationship with their own
states’ interests.
So, how do party manifestoes affect burden sharing? Not a great deal, it appears. A preliminary
experiment based on Comparative Party Manifesto Project20
data found little evidence of strategic culture
within domestic political parties having any impact on military expenditure among member states.
Impact was limited to change in the number of mentions of “Freedom and Human Rights” within a
country increasing the contribution to military spending by .07%, and change in the number of mentions
of “Internationalism” in a positive manner, decreasing contribution to military spending by 0.14% (see